A few issues and concerns.

nezraal · December 2014

My intention is to simply point out the broken mechanics of this game.I am a 20k GS GWF who used to run premade every day, my page rank varies between 8-25, so I know what I am talking about. I suggest the developers to look at the following issues seriously.

#Lose page rank even after winning

- Kick everyone from PvP
- Leave game on disconnect

Example: About two weeks ago my premade team took out a team where three members were in the first 3 pages. It was a heated fight, and just about when we were about to win with a score of 950 - 800, the team leader kicked others from the team and left. The result was no penalty for the team that was about to lose, our page rank (winning team) dropped.

Suggestion: Leave game or disconnect, give them an auto loss

#Troll team compositions

- Run 3 DC , 2 TR (all 20-21k GS DC of course)
- Place each DC in 1 flag

It's not a secret that you need "at-least" 2 players to take out a well rounded DC and do a burst just in the right time. One of the two players, on the attacking side MUST be a CW. Even then taking out a 21k GS, the chances are slim. So what do you do when your opponent is running a 3 DC composition and, on top of that 2 TR?

Imagine a team of SW, DC, GWF, GF, CW vs 3 DC and 2 TR

Suggestion: Each team should have a MAXIMUM of 1 DC

Incompetence

#SW

I am not an SW. But I feel sorry for these guys. I can almost 2-3 shot an SW without an effort. Just because I can overpower these guys doesn't mean I enjoy it.

Suggestion: Give them a viable Paragon path

#TR & HR

Example: I have 46% DR on Sentinel with purified set, etc. A 21k GS TR can give me a 37k Damage! If my hp is down by only 7k, I can be potentially one shot! That too by a stealth class.

Suggestion: Critical damage vs. Tenacity, Tenacity should give higher Severity Resist and oh by the way, I myself carry perfect vorpal!

It's all about the Burst

At the highest level there is no strategy involved. It's a brawl for highest burst damage vs heal. The competition feels like an fps game to whoever can give a "head shot" first, wins.

Suggestion: ARP and piercing scales are killing DR%. A bit of common sense would do a world of good!

Match making system

I don't think this needs a re-introduction.

Suggestion: Look at LOL's match making system, the queue time is slightly longer but the teams are more balanced!

Premade

I am Guild X, we win by default GG.
I am a member of Team Y, a solid player but not part of Team X Guild. I should be punished because of pugs in my team.

Suggestion: Premade and solo queue should be in 2 different ladders! Solo queue should allow only a duo partner. This would give more meaning to a player's independent skill level and push higher standards to the current PvP system

Fast spawn time after death

Two players fight, one die. Respawns fast and runs for flag almost at the time an opponent player that killed him captures the flag. I find myself running for flags more often than actual PvP action. This is boring!

Suggestion: Give kill more rewards by giving them a higher spawn time. This gives enough time for the skilled player to capture flag and heal himself, which he deserves!

Broken feats take too long to fix

I am a GWF and I know what Roar used to do. It took the devs almost 8 months to fix it! There are tons of broken feats and this is mod5. I have never seen an MMO with so many broken feats with only a handful of characters and struggling this poorly.

Suggestion: Use a bit of common sense, please! Make a chart and see what damage AND heal each skill is doing on full 21k GS with different commonly used items! A simple xls file (excel file) will do. It only 2-3 hours to make a full list. Think before you give a feat and rush it into a release

I feel these are realistic reports and why the PvP mechanics of this game feels so broken. This is by no means a dev bashing, it's practical and real and unless I see these points being addressed, I find very little room to tell myself "I am enjoying this game". There is potential for making this game into a balanced well rounded game, the server is still decently populated. The development team has done a good job in keeping AD to a reasonable number (excellent work, I have to give them credit for that). But there are core issues that to be addressed and they are listed above.

Bot Issues

Most of they repeat the same pattern over and over.

Suggestion: Install a key logger and match patterns for keystroke. Additionally add a button at the end of PvP session to:

+ Report Suspect Action as Bot, if there are 9 votes AUTO-LOCK the player, only admin can unban
+ Leaver
+ Refuse to Communicate with Team
+ Foul use of Language

I am also a programmer in real life. I feel your pain. Although this process takes a "bit" of effort it's a clean way to axe such abuses. Cutting out bots and warning trouble makers after being reported will serve as a long term benefit!

Burkaanc's Suggestion (not written by me)

Dungeon Rewards

there is no challenge, nothing to gain from dungeons, rewards are mostly RNG + refining from easy content + daily grind, instead of nice drops from a decently challenging content like we had on launch when we could get t2 parts to sell

Performance Issues

I can run most games on max setting easily, but i get 0.2~3fps on dragon zergs, putting settings to min(minecraft mode) doesnt change much from running max. maybe neverwinter is too hard on ram/cpu and that is the issue, though id guess its the client

Jorifice1 (not written by me)

Warlock a viable PvP Class

Firstly, focus on Soulbinder.
Step One: Replace Shadow Walk and Darkones' Blessing with Class Features that add Control Resistance and Damage Resistance. These would Scale both on Rank and the number of Soul Sparks your Character has.

Step Two: Replace Dark Spiral Aura with an Explosive Spark Aura (or whatever they want to call it), a series of five Spheres that float around the Caster and explode in an AoE whenever they come in contact with an Enemy (including Stealthed Enemies). Each of these will cost one Soul Spark and can be Replenished At-Will as long as you have Sparks available.

Step Three: Add a Feat that will change Hand Of Blight into a Melee only attack that does not require a Target to perform (like GFs and GWFs have). Each successive Rank would add damage and a small amount of Irresistible Necrotic Damage-Over-Time.

Step Four: Greatly reduce or even eliminate the Internal Cool Down for Creeping Doom and increase the chances of it activating substantially.

Step Five: Greatly increase the Out Of Combat duration of Soul Sparks and greatly increase the rate at which the are accumulated. One End-Of-Path Paragon Feat should remove the loss of Sparks over time completel

Good luck!

kilden1234 · December 2014

I like the points.

+1 point from me.

nezraal · December 2014

They won't, this is a good compilation of problems they have currently. I am using a moderate tone in the language and pointing out the real problems of why so many of us at the higher level are leaving. It's not that they are not trying, they are and that's visible. I am "humbly" pointing out what needs to be addressed from my personal experience. My request to everyone who responds to this thread is, I made an effort to put a carefully thought-out list.

Please do not turn it into a flame fest, and, give positive feedback only so they can focus on these areas.

oldbaldyone · December 2014

This is a PvE game with a side of PvP to attract a few additional folks. Any game where you can only have 7 active skills at any time is going to suffer from balance issues in PvP. Other games allow more skills, and therefore its more easily balanced (its like a comparison of rock-paper-scissors versus rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock). More skills means more ways to counter those skills being used against you. It may not bring balance, but you have more options to create balance.

I don't think you are wrong, and I don't think you are right. I think there are some serious issues in the game, basic fundamental flaws that need to be addressed. But, if there is no money in it, forget it.

caldre · December 2014

I agree totally with everything Nezraal has said. In particular the points about kicking from matches and premade and solo queues. So often, even with a solo queue there's so much hate on all sides about GS/Comps (hell would freeze over in some players eyes at the thought of 2 DCs + 2 TRs being put together in a solo queue) and it's not fun. If I queue up to solo queue, I want to stand a chance not run into a full BiS PvP guild premade, but when I queue with 5... I get PuG teams on the other side. It's making me wonder what I should do to get a fair fight. Just today, in a trio queue with us 3 being around 18-19 K each, we ended up with 2 8 K GS TRs vs 5 BiS players.

I came back for mod 5 having quit in mod 4, and I'm saddened to see the state of the PvP now - Something needs doing to fix it.

caldre · December 2014

Oh and Nez -

you loads mate! Gotta do a few matches together soon

pmabraham · December 2014

nezraal, a lot of common sense in every point you make; hopefully PWE / Cryptic will listen.

burkaanc · December 2014

oldbaldyone wrote: »

This is a PvE game with a side of PvP to attract a few additional folks. Any game where you can only have 7 active skills at any time is going to suffer from balance issues in PvP. Other games allow more skills, and therefore its more easily balanced (its like a comparison of rock-paper-scissors versus rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock). More skills means more ways to counter those skills being used against you. It may not bring balance, but you have more options to create balance.

I don't think you are wrong, and I don't think you are right. I think there are some serious issues in the game, basic fundamental flaws that need to be addressed. But, if there is no money in it, forget it.

and how many active skills MOBA's have? the 2985629502 keybind games are a bs that cause even more carpal than refining here. most skills are useless anyway so the have to get at least 1~2 builds/class for start

and there is no money in running empty servers also, by driving away old players they generate a lot of negative feedback and lose guide writers, pvp/pve elite, ppl who can give the best feedback etc.

there are a lot more issues, imho a lot of players would be happy if they skipped a mod(smth like mod7) and focus only in fixing the game

on top of these issues i could add

there is no challenge, nothing to gain from dungeons, rewards are mostly RNG + refining from easy content + daily grind, instead of nice drops from a decently challenging content like we had on launch when we could get t2 parts to sell

no communication from devs, we havent seen a single answer about pathetic state of GWF since mod4 launched, no answers about the bound RP

performance issues - i can run most games on max setting easily, but i get 0.2~3fps on dragon zergs, putting settings to min(minecraft mode) doesnt change much from running max. maybe neverwinter is too hard on ram/cpu and that is the issue, though id guess its the client

lewstelamon01 · December 2014

A thread alluding to quitting or saying you're "thinking about quitting" is the same as saying "I quit", per Rules of Conduct.

Nevertheless, only a title change was necessary--as well as removing the other posts commenting on moderation, as those ARE violating RoC.

nezraal · December 2014

lewstelamon01 wrote: »

A thread alluding to quitting or saying you're "thinking about quitting" is the same as saying "I quit", per Rules of Conduct.

Nevertheless, only a title change was necessary--as well as removing the other posts commenting on moderation, as those ARE violating RoC.

The fact that you took your time to modify the thread, instead of locking it for the betterment of the game, makes me happy and shows qualities of a genuinely good moderator with great ethics! You could have easily locked the thread and push it under the rug. But you chose NOT to, and instead took your time, modified the contents to address these issues! Perhaps there is something inside you that makes you agree with some of the points listed here and it makes me happy and feels we are on the same team!

To push these issues as strong concerns to the developers and turn them into action is a completely different story (instead of the developers being silent and finding ineffective workarounds), and, this is where good people such as yourself and your team have to come forward. Little players such as myself, can only give you feedback, it is YOU and YOUR team that can make the difference! The issues and suggestions, I or others listed are nothing new, and are well known and common knowledge for a proper balance, but the development team has to put them into action! Mod4, 5 have been bitterly disappointing and the workarounds from the development team shows genuine effort but lack of understanding where the energy needs to be focused.

blondiritter · December 2014

That certainly was a lot to read over but all seems legit. I honestly think with all the current classes it may be interesting to have a queue to only allow rainbow parties. No 2 of any class, period. Would make gameplay more interesting imho.

The game does need a lot of work but I can tell you I've been playing since it went live. Some things have improved and there are lots of great ideas that were implemented but also a lot of bugs and issues left unresolved. I still have high hopes for this game as it is still young for an mmo. I do agree that there needs to be a lot of work done to "fix" the game though but as long as some efforts are made I'll stick around.

wisam187 · December 2014

+1

Commenting so it gets seen.

nezraal · December 2014

As supporting evidence, since certain moderators and admin monitored this thread here is an image reference.

50% DR, Sentinel on FULL PURIFIED SET.
I got "1" shot DEATH, 42k HP!

This was from a class that has permanent stealth.

PvP is a big part of MMORPG, and I hope PWE gives careful consideration and engages in proper testing before the release of Mod6!

majorslaughtr · December 2014

nezraal wrote: »

As supporting evidence, since certain moderators and admin monitored this thread here is an image reference.

50% DR, Sentinel on FULL PURIFIED SET.
I got "1" shot DEATH, 42k HP!

This was from a class that has permanent stealth.

PvP is a big part of MMORPG, and I hope PWE gives careful consideration and engages in proper testing before the release of Mod6!

sorry if this off the OP topic, but are you aware Shocking Executioner is a daily power, of which stats are damage + 100% health missing + 100% health missing, looking at the regen just before the attack, were you at full health at that stage?

to keep on track, i do agree with OP, and it would be nice if we could have a civil "sit down" to be able to ask these questions to the dev's and get their response and there direction with the game. Is this something the class advocates could possibly do?

rollingonit · December 2014

+1 to thread.

Good suggestions, and review of some issues.

jorifice1 · December 2014

I like the sound of this!
As a Warlock who is doing moderately well (usually I stay somewhere in the Page 60-80 range, not great, but it could be worse, especially for a 'Lock

), I would love a better path for PvP.

My ideas on making the Warlock a viable PvP Class:
Firstly, focus on Soulbinder.
Step One: Replace Shadow Walk and Darkones' Blessing with Class Features that add Control Resistance and Damage Resistance. These would Scale both on Rank and the number of Soul Sparks your Character has.
Step Two: Replace Dark Spiral Aura with an Explosive Spark Aura (or whatever they want to call it), a series of five Spheres that float around the Caster and explode in an AoE whenever they come in contact with an Enemy (including Stealthed Enemies). Each of these will cost one Soul Spark and can be Replenished At-Will as long as you have Sparks available.
Step Three: Add a Feat that will change Hand Of Blight into a Melee only attack that does not require a Target to perform (like GFs and GWFs have). Each successive Rank would add damage and a small amount of Irresistible Necrotic Damage-Over-Time.
Step Four: Greatly reduce or even eliminate the Internal Cool Down for Creeping Doom and increase the chances of it activating substantially.
Step Five: Greatly increase the Out Of Combat duration of Soul Sparks and greatly increase the rate at which the are accumulated. One End-Of-Path Paragon Feat should remove the loss of Sparks over time completely.

jorifice1 · December 2014

oldbaldyone wrote: »

Other games allow more skills, and therefore its more easily balanced (its like a comparison of rock-paper-scissors versus rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock). More skills means more ways to counter those skills being used against you. It may not bring balance, but you have more options to create balance.

I have to disagree MOST strongly with this!
As anyone who knows ANYTHING about PvP knows, Spock is OP.
You cannot have Spock without him being OP.
Spock is ALWAYS OP.
This is what it means to be Spock.

jakefear · December 2014

@nezraal

if tenacity works i think your DR should be 68.1%?

juanlu311 · December 2014

+1 to thread.

Devs please stop launching new content and take the time to fix the bugs on PVP our powers and feats. ATM PVP is almost unplayable because is so broken and unbalanced

lewstelamon01 · December 2014

juanlu311 wrote: »

+1 to thread.

Devs please stop launching new content and take the time to fix the bugs on PVP our powers and feats. ATM PVP is almost unplayable because is so broken and unbalanced

Going to counter this rather tired cry with the following: Cryptic isn't going to lay entire teams idle just to "fix everything". Everything has to be done concurrently. That's the nature of the development cycle.

twilightwatchman · December 2014

nezraal wrote: »

PvP is a big part of MMORPG, and I hope PWE gives careful consideration and engages in proper testing before the release of Mod6!

PvP is a very small part of NWO, unless you play on the Russian server. It's just that on these forums PvPers are overrepresented and very vocal. However, we can all hope for better testing - although more people willing to copy characters to Preview and do playtesting on new content would help.

burkaanc · December 2014

lewstelamon01 wrote: »

Going to counter this rather tired cry with the following: Cryptic isn't going to lay entire teams idle just to "fix everything". Everything has to be done concurrently. That's the nature of the development cycle.

you do understand that there are bugs in every department so every team would have stuff to do ?

myowmyow · December 2014

nezraal wrote: »

Bot Issues

Most of they repeat the same pattern over and over.

Suggestion: Install a key logger and match patterns for keystroke. Additionally add a button at the end of PvP session to:

+ Report Suspect Action as Bot, if there are 9 votes AUTO-LOCK the player, only admin can unban
+ Leaver
+ Refuse to Communicate with Team
+ Foul use of Language

I like all of your points except for that first item under Bot Issues. There is way too much chance for abuse by immature players for a 9-vote auto-lock of an account. All it takes is for one player to be mad at another, then get a group of their friends to "bot report" the disliked person - and BOOM, instant ban.

Everything else is great!

nezraal · December 2014

@jakefear

jakefear wrote: »

@nezraal

if tenacity works i think your DR should be 68.1%?

Tenacity has an additional feature. It directly reduces Critical Severity! No change for DR or control resistance,

"Tenacity is a PvP stat introduced March 6th, 2014. The tenacity stat increases damage resistance, crit damage resistance and control resistance against enemy players."

Formula 4.2 Effect of tenacity on crit damage

If the hit was a crit the multiplier is applied again multiplicatively.

Crit Damage in PvP = base damage * (1+ total crit severity %) * (1 + RI % – DR %) * (1- TeR %)^2

And right now spike damage on 50% DR is taking 40k+ damage from certain encounters. This is a matter of concern, and a quick effective fix in my opinion is to re-evaluate the formula above.

This way PvE players remain untouched and PvP gets more balanced damage.

FYI. I myself carry a P.Vorpal

Source: (2 links both are good reads)

http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Tenacity
http://laggygamerz.com/forum/index.php?/topic/382-kaelac%E2%80%99s-guide-to-damage-tenacity-reisistance-and-debuffs-in-neverwinter/

Also, in my opinion Damage Given, DR% , RI% , Critical Damage should have a completely different formula for PvP and PvE. A lot of MMO follows this rule and takes care of a lot of headaches.

A few issues and concerns.

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